Writing about your experiences through fantastical worlds and characters is a way to explore, process, and share your emotions creatively and engagingly. By translating real-life events into storytelling, you can distance yourself from painful memories for therapeutic benefit and revel in the joys of imaginative storytelling. Let’s dive into how you can achieve this and examples of how to make it work.

Therapeutic Expression

Translating experiences into fantasy allows the safe exploration of trauma or unresolved emotions. By framing yourself as a brave elf, misunderstood android, or defiant mage, you can process personal struggles in ways that feel less overwhelming.

Self-Gratification

Reimagining your role in an experience—perhaps giving yourself agency, strength, or closure you didn’t have in real life—can be incredibly satisfying. It can also imbue a sense of control or even emotionally rewrite how you internalize the past.

Universal Connection

By using personal experiences in metaphor, you create a story that’s relatable while still unique. A reader may not have faced a dragon, but they’ll understand the fear, triumph, or loss that your protagonist encounters.

Creative Mastery

Worldbuilding, character creation, and intricate plots give you a playground for creativity while subtly narrating your truth.

Identify the Emotional Truth

Begin by asking: What do I want to express? Whether it’s heartbreak, joy, betrayal, or growth, identifying the core emotion will help shape your narrative.

What’s the Genre of Your Experience?

Heroic Adventure: Overcoming a challenge? Turn it into a journey of a warrior conquering a cursed mountain.

Sci-Fi Mystery: If you’re dealing with existential questions, your life as a detective exploring alien worlds could frame this.

Dark Fantasy: For grief or trauma, gothic settings—shrouded in fog and riddled with danger—might resonate.

Create a Surrogate for Yourself

Invent a character that mirrors your struggles but inhabits your fantastical setting. If you’re grappling with feeling unheard, create a character like an outcast inventor in a society that shuns technology.

Here are some examples of translating real-life experiences into a fantasy genre.

Real-Life Scenario: You graduated after years of doubting yourself.

Fantasy Setting: A young wizard completes a perilous magical trial to earn their staff of power.

Why It Works: The magical trial symbolizes the hard work and self-discovery that led to your achievement. The staff becomes a
tangible metaphor for your newfound confidence.

Real-Life Scenario: A close friend lied to you, breaking your trust.

Fantasy Setting: A knight’s trusted ally turns out to be a spy for the
enemy, leading to an epic battle for redemption.

Why It Works: The knight’s journey to reclaim honor mirrors your process of rebuilding trust and finding closure.

Worlds Reflect Emotions

Now let’s examine how a fantastical world can match the emotions you are writing with. A serene floating city for feelings of joy or nostalgia, a decaying wasteland for grief or despair, or a chaotic market planet for times of uncertainty. How about a detail of your world representing an experience of yours?

Mountains: Symbolize obstacles or personal growth.

Caves: Represent introspection or hidden truths.

Storms: Reflect tumultuous emotions like anger or fear.

A character can personify a writer’s struggle or a moment in their lives that was profound for them. A tyrannical king could represent societal pressures or a helpful herbalist mage might symbolize a friend who gave you wisdom during a tough time. Good characters aren’t perfect. If your protagonist is grappling with self-doubt, let them hesitate before taking action or make mistakes they must learn from.

If an antagonist represents someone from your life, adding layers to their character will make your story feel more nuanced. Instead of making them evil for evil’s sake, explore their motivations, just as you’ve likely analyzed those of the person who hurt you.

Fantastical Translations

I’d like to share with you examples of fantastical translations, one that fits and one that doesn’t.

Good Example: Real-Life Experience: Anxiety about starting a new job.

Fantasy Version: A shape-shifting rookie spy struggles to navigate their first mission while hiding their true identity.

Why It Works: The spy’s mission amplifies the writer’s real-world fears about starting something new, but the fantastical stakes keep the reader engaged and the character’s goal interesting.

Bad Example: Real-Life Experience: Your sibling’s betrayal.

Fantasy Version: A demon sibling who is evil without reason.

Why It Fails: Without exploring the motivations or aftermath, the story feels one-dimensional and doesn’t reflect your personal growth from dealing with the betrayal.

Writing about yourself in the third person or through an entirely different character can help you see the bigger picture. By fleshing out characters, you might gain insight into the perspectives of people involved in your real-life experiences. Ending your story in a way that gives your protagonist resolution can provide a sense of emotional closure in your own life.

Writing Exercises

There are exercises that a writer can try during their writing process to better connect personal experience to rich world-building and character development.

In what I call Emotion-to-World, choose an emotion and sketch a world that symbolizes it. Is it warm and inviting or cold and harsh? Populate it with creatures and landmarks that reflect that feeling.

When you have to Rewrite a Memory, take a vivid memory and rewrite it as a scene in a fantastical setting. How do the characters change in the translation from the memory? How do you find closure as the writer?

In writing Dialogues with Emotions, personify your emotions as characters. What would your fear say to you if it could talk? How might courage respond to it?

Whether you're fighting dragons to symbolize personal battles or exploring alien worlds to make sense of existential questions, the possibilities are as vast as your imagination. Let your life be the seed for a garden of stories—wild, fantastical, and uniquely yours.

Let's hear your thoughts in the comments below!

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